If you are sanguine about a situation, especially a difficult one, you are confident and cheerful that everything will work out the way you want it to.

Serendipity is the good fortune that some people encounter in finding or making interesting and valuable discoveries purely by luck.

To subvert something, like a government, is to try to destroy or damage its power and influence; to subvert someone is to corrupt her morals, loyalty, or faith.

Severe problems, difficulties, or suffering experienced in a particular situation are all examples of tribulations.

Vicissitudes can be unexpected or simply normal changes and variations that happen during life.

A windfall is the sudden appearance of a large amount of money that is completely unexpected.

You need to enable Javascript to get the best out of this site. Please :-).

Adj.

fortuitous

fawr-TOO-i-tuhs

Context

The chance, fortuitous encounter of the two songwriters led to a lifelong, musical partnership. They were both known for writing love songs, in which lucky, fortuitous events happened leading to happy circumstances. When the writers’ strike broke out in Hollywood, they were fortuitously or accidentally across the Atlantic working on a new musical, so the duo remained prosperous despite the strike.

Memory Hook

Fortunate Tuition House I was unable to pay my tuition one semester, but then a long lost aunt died who left me her house, a fortunate event for me since then I was able to pay my tuition by selling the house, quite the fortuitous chain of events.

Examples

The fortuitous combination of boomer collecting power and a new desire on the part of young artists to engage a wider audience has driven the market for contemporary art to unprecedented levels.
—Newsweek

A fortuitous meeting between Youmans and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe at a local club led to the latter’s interest and subsequent production work on Trinket’s 1996 indie release, Your Head Is a Shimmer.
—Rolling Stone

The scandal began when academic research revealed the suspiciously fortuitous timing of option grants, a disproportionate number of which occurred just before a rise in the share prices of executives' companies.
—The Economist

The discovery of mirror neurons, while fortuitous, was actually the culmination of decades of painstaking scientific inquiry in dozens of brain laboratories around the world, and the authors take us into those labs to watch this important scientific tale unfold.
—The Washington Post

Word Ingredients

A fortuitous event “possesses the nature of luck or chance” that brings about something good.

Word Theater

Tombstone She believes that it is fortuitous that the two of them have met.

The panel shows a small video clip of either the word in actual use or a scene that represents the meaning of a word. This not only breaks up the monotony of studying words but also provides another avenue to strengthen word meaning. Enjoy!